Abu Juwairiya
Junior Member
"The United States adopted a two-pronged strategic approach to achieving its goal of containment. One was to penetrate a number of key Muslim states; another was to use brute force whenever necessary. As part of the first prong, the United States set out to forge a close alliance with Saudi Arabia.
The groundwork for this alliance was laid down in the 1945 meeting between King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, based on the US promise to provide protection for the theocratic rule of the Ibn Saudi family against AbdulAziz's ruling cousins in Iraq and Jordan, and the Saudi promise to ensure an uninterrupted flow of oil to the West. In a similar vein, the United States also penetrated Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan. It is important to note that in the case of each intervention, the Unites States also germinated the seeds for a blowback As part of the second prong, the United States intervened in Iran in 1953.
In perhaps the most successful covert operation of the Cold War, the CIA toppled the elected reformist government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and reinstalled the pro-Western Shah's regime to rule Iran from that point onwards at the behest of the United States.
This confirmed Iran’s position as an anti-communist state. The US intervention was resented by a great majority of the Iranian people and opposed by manyregional states. The blowback came a quarter of a century later in the form of the 1978 79 Revolution, as most of the Iranian people could not regard the Shah’s regime as legitimate and could not support the continued US Iranian alliance.
This was followed by the US intervention in Lebanon in 1958 in support of the country’s Christian President Camille Chamoun, who wanted an extension of his term of office. In doing so, the US placed itself in opposition to the Nasserite radical Arab rationalism, which Washington saw as a smoke screen for international Communism. In addition, the United States not only backed Israel in the 1967 war, but also intervened in Lebanon again in the wake of the 1982 Israeli invasion of the country. The objective was to bail Israel out of a conflict that it had started but in which it had become bogged down.
Although the American intervention was short lived, it contributed substantially to the germination and growth of the Lebanese Hezbollah (Party of God) as an Iranian backed, anti-Israel and anti-US Shi’ite force. Hezbollah grew to become a major challenge to Israel and the United States in the region. The result of all this was a rise in anti-Americanism among the Arabs and Muslims in the region. Beyond this, the United States played a critical role in the Iran Iraq war of 1980 88, which proved to be the longest, bloodiest and most costly war ever fought in the modern history of the Middle East. The purpose was to promote Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship as an Arab bulwark against Khomeini’s Islamic Iran. The drawback of this was that Saddam Hussein grew so confident that after the war with Iran he could threaten Israel and invade Kuwait." ("Super Power Rivalry and Conflict of the Cold War in the Twentieth Century" By Chandra Chari, P 58-9, 2010)
The groundwork for this alliance was laid down in the 1945 meeting between King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, based on the US promise to provide protection for the theocratic rule of the Ibn Saudi family against AbdulAziz's ruling cousins in Iraq and Jordan, and the Saudi promise to ensure an uninterrupted flow of oil to the West. In a similar vein, the United States also penetrated Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan. It is important to note that in the case of each intervention, the Unites States also germinated the seeds for a blowback As part of the second prong, the United States intervened in Iran in 1953.
In perhaps the most successful covert operation of the Cold War, the CIA toppled the elected reformist government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and reinstalled the pro-Western Shah's regime to rule Iran from that point onwards at the behest of the United States.
This confirmed Iran’s position as an anti-communist state. The US intervention was resented by a great majority of the Iranian people and opposed by manyregional states. The blowback came a quarter of a century later in the form of the 1978 79 Revolution, as most of the Iranian people could not regard the Shah’s regime as legitimate and could not support the continued US Iranian alliance.
This was followed by the US intervention in Lebanon in 1958 in support of the country’s Christian President Camille Chamoun, who wanted an extension of his term of office. In doing so, the US placed itself in opposition to the Nasserite radical Arab rationalism, which Washington saw as a smoke screen for international Communism. In addition, the United States not only backed Israel in the 1967 war, but also intervened in Lebanon again in the wake of the 1982 Israeli invasion of the country. The objective was to bail Israel out of a conflict that it had started but in which it had become bogged down.
Although the American intervention was short lived, it contributed substantially to the germination and growth of the Lebanese Hezbollah (Party of God) as an Iranian backed, anti-Israel and anti-US Shi’ite force. Hezbollah grew to become a major challenge to Israel and the United States in the region. The result of all this was a rise in anti-Americanism among the Arabs and Muslims in the region. Beyond this, the United States played a critical role in the Iran Iraq war of 1980 88, which proved to be the longest, bloodiest and most costly war ever fought in the modern history of the Middle East. The purpose was to promote Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship as an Arab bulwark against Khomeini’s Islamic Iran. The drawback of this was that Saddam Hussein grew so confident that after the war with Iran he could threaten Israel and invade Kuwait." ("Super Power Rivalry and Conflict of the Cold War in the Twentieth Century" By Chandra Chari, P 58-9, 2010)